


restless as we are

by delayofgame



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Melancholy, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-16 23:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20610944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delayofgame/pseuds/delayofgame
Summary: “Let’s go somewhere.”Anders raises his eyebrows. “Right now?”Jake frowns. “No, like, after finals. I have a car. We could just drive, anywhere we want.”





	restless as we are

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S FINALLY DONE!
> 
> this fic KILLED me and it took me so long to write but i'm so proud of it. so much work went into this and i really hope you all enjoy it

The party is only a handful of hours old, but Anders is already wishing that he’d brought something to read. He’s on the couch in the den, the least populated room in the house, holding his near-empty drink in the crook of his elbow. The speakers in the main hall have the bass boosted up so much that the song is unrecognizable. 

“Anders!” Jake calls out, racing into the room and barely avoiding hitting his shin against the coffee table. “Get up, we’re playing beer pong.”

Anders is only a little bit drunk, but it still takes his brain a moment to catch up with what’s happening. “_We_?”

Jake nods. “Yeah. Sean and Charlie challenged us.”

He grabs Anders’ hand and pulls him onto his feet. Anders goes along with it, gaining his footing after a few strides, and follows Jake into the dining room. The house belongs to some senior named Torey that Anders has never met. It’s nice but sparsely furnished, as if his parents are aware that anything ornate or valuable is at risk of being stolen or broken by drunken high school students. 

The dining room table has been set up for beer pong. Charlie and Sean are already waiting at the other side, being hyped up by a group of their friends that Anders remembers seeing in passing but couldn’t differentiate from one another. 

“The winners have arrived,” Jake announces. This catches the attention of the group, including a few jeers and bits of trash-talk that Jake doesn’t bother to return. He offers a few fist-bumps instead. He makes his presence known so easily, integrating himself into a group without the slightest hesitation. Anders doesn’t _envy_ it, but he appreciates that about Jake. Something seems to come alive when he enters a room. 

Anders waits at the end of the table for the game to start. He notices that Sean, one of the kids he knows well enough to recognize but has never actually had a conversation with, has drifted slightly away from the rest of the group and is looking at him.

“Hi, Anders,” Sean says. He gives a small smile.

Anders is so surprised that Sean actually remembered his name that he just awkwardly nods back. Jake’s friends don’t usually give him much attention. Anders always feels like some sort of parasitic creature at parties like this, clinging to Jake’s side and feeding off of his enjoyment of things. Never like an independent entity with his own name and his own personality. 

They play rock, paper, scissors to determine who goes first, and Jake soundly beats Sean in a best two-out-of-three. The music switches to something with an aggressive beat. Jake goes first, of course, and he misses badly but laughs it off. Sean gets a bit closer.

Anders tries to ignore his nerves when he steps up for his turn. He drains his first shot, right into one of the cups in the back row. Sean gives him an impressed nod and fishes the ball out before chugging the contents of the cup.

Jake slaps Anders on the back. “Good shot.”

Charlie misses, and Jake’s shot bounces off the rim of the front cup. On his turn, Sean lets the ball go from eye level and it drops into the cup right in front of Anders. 

Anders downs it in two swallows. It’s shitty beer, and the taste lingers on his tongue. 

He doesn’t have a particular strategy for his next shot, just chucks it and hopes for the best. It lands perfectly in the frontmost cup. 

Jake whoops. Charlie grimaces as he drains the cup. 

A small crowd has gathered. They go back and forth for a while, getting progressively worse at aiming the more they drink. Anders goes on a cold streak and is saved by Jake sinking three shots in a row. Sean and Charlie hold their own, and each team ends up with one cup left. 

Sean’s shot just barely rims out, and he and Charlie groan. 

“Come on,” Jake says, rubbing Anders’ back as if he’s a trainer hyping up a boxer between rounds. “Finish it.”

Anders doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t really aim, just looks at the cup and flicks his wrist and watches as the ball falls into the beer. 

The crowd erupts. Sean buries his head in his hands as Charlie begrudgingly gulps down the contents of the cup. Jake is going nuts, cheering and launching into a hug that nearly knocks Anders against the table. Anders’ head is spinning and he can still taste the beer and Jake is so _warm_, still with his arms thrown around Anders’ shoulders. He smells like alcohol and spearmint gum and some sort of woody cologne probably meant for someone much older than him. 

The crowd engulfs them. People Anders doesn’t even know pat him on the back and call him a _legend_, convinced by a single game of beer pong that he’s the coolest person in the room. It’s fun, and it feels good, but Jake lets go of him and takes a step back as people crowd around them. Anders immediately feels the loss of Jake’s presence. 

They lose track of each other for a while. Anders is too drunk to keep track of time, but it feels like too long. He gets pushed around between groups of loud, tiresome friends-of-friends-of-friends, never really making connections, just listening to inane conversations shouted over songs that are indiscernible from all of the others. 

The novelty of the attention wears off quickly. He starts looking for Jake again.

━━━━━━━━

“What’s Edmonton like?” Anders asks. He balances his styrofoam tray on his knees as he takes a bite of his chicken sandwich. They’re eating lunch in a vacant classroom, an idea that Jake had come up with after Anders complained about how noisy the cafeteria was, even though Jake never had difficulty finding someone to sit with and had plenty of options besides eating alone with Anders on the floor every time they had the same lunch period.

“Cold,” Jake says immediately. “And of course, it’s a much bigger city.”

Anders nods. “Bigger than Milwaukee?”

Jake actually laughs at him. “Of course it’s bigger than Milwaukee! Have you ever left Wisconsin in your _life_?”

It isn’t mean, the way he laughs and teases. Not when the corners of his eyes crinkle because he’s smiling so big. He presses his thigh right up against Anders’, maybe just to knock his lunch tray over, but maybe not. He doesn’t move away after Anders moves it to the floor. 

“I haven’t been back in five years,” Jake says. “I always thought I’d go and visit more, make sure my neighborhood still looked the same. I actually wanted to make friends with whoever moved in so I could see the place again. Of course, then we moved a whole country away and my mom said it would only make me and my sister sad if we kept thinking about it.”

“I think she was probably right.” Anders doesn’t know for sure, because he’s lived in the same house since he was born. It’s uncomfortable to envision somebody else living there.

Jake shrugs. “I don’t know. I can’t really place what’s sad about it.”

“I think it breaks the illusion of permanence,” Anders replies. “Like, the world is gonna keep turning without you. Any space you leave is gonna get filled. Everything that you say is yours will be someone else’s eventually. The human mind isn’t meant to comprehend eternity.”

There’s a long pause. Someone walks down the hall past the door with their headphones blasting something heavy with bass. 

Jake eventually turns to Anders. “Dude. Where the hell did that come from?”

Anders doesn’t know. He had just opened his mouth and let his stream of consciousness come out, and that it sounded profound to Jake was probably pure luck and coincidence.

“Throw enough shit at a wall and eventually something’ll stick,” Anders says, content with how much it _doesn’t_ cure Jake’s confusion.

The lunch bell rings. 

Jake finally moves his leg away from Anders’. “See you in fourth period, dude.”

Anders lingers in the room after Jake leaves. The hallway fills with noisy students, filing to their next classes, shuffling in two directions like a traffic jam on the highway south towards Milwaukee. He thinks he hears someone call Jake’s name. They probably jog to catch up with him, bumping through a forest of backpacks and not caring who they jostle. That’s just what people do when they see Jake. 

He’d left his lunch tray on the floor, Anders notices. He stacks it on top of his own and carries it under his arm until he finds a trash barrel just a bit out of the way of his next class.

━━━━━━━━

“This party sucks,” Jake says, finishing the last of whatever is in his cup. “Let’s ditch.”

Anders nods. This party isn’t sticking out as particularly bad to him; they’re all this loud and crowded and pointless, but there’s no reason to stay if Jake doesn’t want to. He leaves his half-finished beer on the coffee table and follows Jake as he heads toward the front door. They squeeze their way past a few overly-handsy couples in the hallway.

Outside, the air is cool. Anders is mostly sober, only stumbling once on his way down the stairs, and Jake seems to be about the same. He stops abruptly at the end of the driveway. 

“Let’s go somewhere.”

Anders raises his eyebrows. “Right now?”

Jake frowns. “No, like, after finals. I have a car. We could just drive, anywhere we want.”

He’s looking up at the sky. It’s cloudy, but there are clear patches where clusters of stars shine through. The street is dark and quiet.

“My mom wants me to get a job this summer,” Anders says. “I don’t know if I’d have a lot of time to go driving around.”

Jake turns to look at him. “It doesn’t have to be that long. Just a few days, as long as it’s just-”

He stops himself. It’s hard to tell in the dim glow of the streetlights, but Anders thinks he might be blushing.

Anders picks idly at a hangnail. “Yeah, I’d be up for that.”

“Good,” Jake replies. His eyes are just as bright as always, something impish about the way his lips curl into a smile. He’s the kind of person you don’t say no to. Everything he says somehow sounds like a good idea, even outside of the haze of drunkness, made convincing by his unending enthusiasm and conviction. 

Jake sits down on the steps and stretches his legs out. Anders sits down beside him, far enough that their knees don’t touch and he can lean against the railing on the other side.

“You remember how we became friends?” Jake asks. 

Anders nods. “Of course. You showed up in seventh grade homeroom the day after Christmas break, chose to sit next to me for some reason, and talked my ear off about how weird American schools are. And I let you, and then you did it the next day, and the day after that, and I guess that’s how people make friends.”

“_I guess_,” Jake laughs. “You know, I didn’t just sit next to you randomly. I knew I had to have a best friend, cause how do you get through school without one? So I had to pick carefully.”

Anders raises his eyebrows. “Wait. You were, like, best-friend-hunting on day _one_? I feel like most new kids just kind of… _survive_ for the first few weeks.”

“And that’s why they have such a hard time,” Jake professes. “You’ve gotta be ahead of the game.”

Anders shakes his head. He’s never met anyone quite like Jake before, someone who can keep baffling him five years into being best friends. He finds it hard to imagine Jake looking around the room on his first day and deciding who he would impose his friendship on, then eventually settling on Anders with his two-sizes-too-big women’s parka that was a hand-me-down from his sister draped over his chair.

“Don’t you want to know why I picked you?” Jake asks quietly. 

Anders turns to meet his eyes. He knows Jake had been baiting him by not disclosing it before, but he hadn’t been sure he’d wanted to take it. He has to, now. 

“Yeah.”

Jake closes his eyes for a moment, like he’s trying to immerse himself in the memory of their meeting.

“When I walked in, you were the first person I saw,” Jake says. “And I just got this feeling like I already knew you. Kind of like when you show up to the first day of class and you just let out a sigh of relief when you recognize a friend? That’s what it was like.”

Anders doesn’t know what he was expecting Jake to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. It’s honest and simple, on its face. Beyond that, though, there are implications that Anders doesn’t think he’s ready to explore when he’s sitting tipsy on the front step of someone he’s never met. 

“You two want a ride?” A voice cuts through the silence. Anders looks up and sees Sean standing at the top of the steps beside a kid with pale, blond hair and button-up shirt just a touch too formal for a party like this. 

“Not if you’re driving,” Jake says. “I watched you play flip cup, like twenty minutes ago.”

Sean laughs. “You watched me _win_ flip cup, more like. And of course not. Danny’s driving.”

He throws an arm around the blond’s shoulders.

“Danton doesn’t drink,” Jake explains to Anders’ still-worried expression. 

Sean loudly calls shotgun when they reach the car, so Jake and Anders squeeze into the back of the blue Prius. It’s a tight fit. Jake doesn’t buckle his seatbelt and ends up almost entirely in Anders’ lap every time Danton takes a hard turn. 

“Anders,” Sean shouts over the AC/DC song that Danton had turned up loud to discourage anyone from talking. “We should hang out more. Jake’s always talking about how cool you are. And you’re, like, hella good at beer pong.”

Anders feels his face heat up, but he’s drunk enough that it was probably already red.

Sean twists in his seat so he’s facing the back of the car. “Tell you what. Next party, me and you against Jake and Charlie. We’ll kill ‘em.”

Anders expects Jake to protest, but he doesn’t. He has a strange expression on his face.

“What about me and Jake against you and Danton? We wouldn't make him actually drink,” Anders suggests. He considers reaching out to Jake for a fist-bump or a high five or some other sign of solidarity, but it strikes him as awkward and he starts picking at a loose thread on his jeans instead.

“Oh, no way,” Sean replies. “Danny is lethal at beer pong. Wouldn’t even be fair for you guys.”

Anders can’t tell whether or not it’s a joke. Danton doesn’t react, showing no signs that he’s even listening to them at all. 

They reach Jake’s house first. Jake is still acting odd, but he gives his usual bright smile when Anders gets out to walk him up the long driveway. 

“I’m not gonna die in my own driveway,” Jake says, still smiling. “I think I can make it by myself.”

Anders shrugs. “It’s the polite thing to do.”

“For your _girlfriend_, maybe,” Jake replies, too loud. Anders sees him frown and shake his head just slightly out of the corner of his eye. 

When they reach the front steps, Jake doesn’t meet Anders eyes, but he pulls him in for a hug that goes on for so long that Anders’ mind starts to race. He’s about to ask if Jake is okay, but then Jake steps back.

“See you on Monday.”

He’s up the stairs and behind the closed door before Anders can open his mouth.

The next morning, when Anders wakes up at one in the afternoon with a pounding headache, he won’t be sure if it really happened that way or if he imagined it.

━━━━━━━━

The week after finals, they pack up Jake’s car early in the morning. The sun is just barely beginning to peek over the horizon. Anders has a backpack with two extra pairs of clothes, his phone charger, headphones, around $80 in cash, and his favorite brand of spearmint gum. Everything else, he can live without for a few days.

Jake packs the trunk with towels, bags of snacks, and a cooler that most likely contains soda bottles filled with alcohol. 

The drive seems to go by in a flash. They listen to Jake’s _Ultimate Epic Fire Summer Mixtape_, as it’s titled on Spotify, and make each other laugh so hard their stomachs hurt. They don’t have a specific destination in mind. They simply agree to drive north until they get bored and then find a cheap-but-not-too-seedy motel for the night. Jake takes the exit toward Door Peninsula on a whim, citing a “sick” family vacation to Ellison Bay a few years prior. 

By the time they near the tip of the peninsula, they’re hungry and eager to stretch their legs. A sign for a motel appears as they round a curve in the road. 

“You up for stopping?” Jake asks.

Anders nods.

The motel has a kitschy lighthouse-shaped building out front, next to a circle of white Adirondack chairs around a fire pit. The lake is in view right across the street. It’s early enough in the summer that there aren’t many tourists, just a few out-of-state license plates visible in the parking lot at the docks. 

Once they check in and everything is unloaded from the car and piled onto the desk and armchair in the motel room, Jake opens up the cooler and hands Anders a glass soda bottle. He also takes one for himself.

Anders takes one sip and nearly chokes. “This is definitely not Dr. Pepper.”

“Nope,” Jake says, laughing as he sits down on the edge of one of the beds. “It’s something from a fancy bottle my dad keeps in the basement.”

“If you get arrested for this, you’ll deserve it.”

Jake fakes a pout. “Some friend you are. Here I was thinking you’d be my first phone call from jail.”

“I’d hang up on you,” Anders deadpans. 

Jake cracks up, falling onto his back on the bed and holding his stomach as he laughs. “I hate you,” he manages between breaths.

Anders takes another sip of not-Dr.-Pepper to hide the affection threatening to show itself all over his face.

━━━━━━━━

Jake’s voice cuts through the quiet room. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” Anders replies, staring up at the ceiling. 

Jake is quiet for a minute. Anders lies still in anticipation, unsure of what Jake wants. Their beds are only a handful of feet apart. The gap feels like it’s a mile wide, though, even though Anders can hear Jake’s breathing if he listens closely. 

“Let’s go swimming,” Jake says finally. 

Anders turns to look at him, having to squint through the darkness to do so. The clock on the table between their beds reads _12:26_. 

“Night swimming is the best,” Jake tries to reason. “And it’s pretty warm tonight. We could just go to the docks across the road.”

He needn’t explain himself, though, because Anders wouldn’t dream of saying no. He thinks of his mother, how she’d ask him _Would you jump off of a cliff if your friends did?_ as if to get his head back on straight. She must not know Jake very well.

They’re both barefoot, so they have to walk gingerly across the gravel lot in front of the docks. There doesn’t seem to be a soul in the world awake besides them. All of the houses at the rim of the lake are dark and quiet.

Jake pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it onto the dock, then dives headfirst into the lake. The ripples dissipate before he surfaces, and Anders feels a pang of worry until Jake’s head pops up about ten feet out. 

Jake is grinning. “Come on, it isn’t cold at all!”

Anders doesn’t bother to take his shirt off, he just does a lopsided cannonball in an attempt to drench Jake. 

He comes up spluttering. “It’s fucking freezing, asshole!”

Jake bursts out laughing. He ducks underwater when Anders tries to splash him.

They’re both good swimmers, so they race each other out past the buoys meant to demarcate the swimming area. When Jake lags behind on the way back, Anders is about to turn around to check that he’s okay before he feels a hand grab his foot and Jake surfaces with a wicked grin on his face. He takes off toward shore before Anders can retaliate.

Jake gets to the dock first and scrambles on top of it, raising his hands in surrender. “Truce! Truce!”

“You play so dirty,” Anders gripes from the water. He ducks his head under and whips his hair back so it doesn’t fall over his face. 

Jake lies down on the dock with his feet hanging over the edge. The manic energy from earlier disappears, and they’re left with a peaceful quiet. 

Anders pulls himself out of the water and settles onto his back beside Jake. It’s the first time he notices how bright the stars are, how vast and lonely the night sky looks here. He feels drops of water slide down his arms and sides and begin to pool on the dock beneath him. 

“Have you ever thought about leaving?” Jake asks. 

Anders turns his head to look at him. “_Leaving_?”

“Yeah, like, just driving off and never coming back,” Jake says. “Going to Canada or something.”

“Um, not really. Have you?”

Jake sits up, dangling his legs over the side of the dock. “Yeah. Sometimes I think about what would happen if I did. How long people would miss me before they stopped caring.”

Anders props himself up on his elbows. This is new, coming from Jake, a mindset that Anders didn’t expect. Jake never seemed like the type to brood over something like this. 

“I would miss you,” Anders says.

Jake turns to meet his gaze. A smile plays at the corners of his lips. “You won’t have to. I’ll take you with me.”

Something tightens in Anders’ chest. He knows, conceptually, that he’s Jake’s best friend, just as Jake is his. It feels different to hear it like this. Like it isn’t just the proximity or the convenience. Like maybe, even after they graduate, they could still have this. Like even if they parted ways, they might find their way back to each other. 

Anders returns his smile. “Okay.”

The water laps at the dock, a gentle sound. Anders watches as a plane flies overhead. Its lights blink and flash against the dark backdrop of the sky, high enough that it’s silent. 

Anders drags his foot through the water, then kicks a cascade of droplets into the air. Jake splutters when he takes most of the fire and reaches down with his hands to get Anders back. They exchange a few splashes before breaking into giggles, breathless and gleeful and not caring about the way their voices must be traveling through the night. Anders looks up at Jake after a moment to find him gazing back.

Then, almost without warning, Jake gets a hand in Anders’ hair and kisses him. It’s so greedy and uncoordinated that Anders can’t get into a rhythm to kiss him back. He just lets himself be devoured, his pulse thrumming with want and exhilaration and surprise all at once. 

When Jake pulls away, he looks almost as surprised as Anders feels. With himself, maybe, for making a move, or with Anders for letting him. 

Anders’ skin prickles at the feeling of the night air. He has a million questions he wants to ask but they all feel inappropriate for the moment he’s found himself caught in, so he just waits for Jake to speak first. 

It’s a long time before he does. The moon disappears behind a cloud, and it’s suddenly very dark.

“I’m getting cold,” Jake says. “Let’s go back.”

Anders feels a pang of disappointment. “Okay. Don’t forget your shirt.”

━━━━━━━━

The rest of the trip goes by dizzyingly fast. They don’t kiss again, and they don’t talk about the night at the docks. It certainly feels weird after that, but subtly enough that Anders wonders if it’s all in his head. Jake doesn’t treat him any different. To anyone else, they’d seem like any two high school kids being obnoxious at restaurants and driving too fast and listening to questionable music. Like any other pair of friends.

_Friends don’t kiss each other_, Anders tells himself. 

_Stop thinking so much_, Jake says without words.

Anders is starting to be convinced that everything really will continue on as normal, right up until Jake pulls into Anders’ driveway to drop him off after three days of being around each other twenty-four seven. 

Jake turns the music off, but doesn’t say anything at first, leaving the car quiet and tense.

“I hope I don't get Dr. McMahon for stats next year,” Anders says just to fill the silence. School is a safe topic.

Jake doesn’t react for a long moment. Anders taps his foot against the rubber floor mat and keeps his eyes trained straight ahead, down the road lined with leafy trees and thick grass, the very picture of a suburban summer. Anders is struck by a feeling of impermanence. The summer will end, like it always seems to do too quickly, and the leaves and grass will brown and die. School will start, _senior year_, and then it will be time to apply to college and pick a career path and deal with the reality of life outside the circle of people he’s been around for his entire life. Or, in Jake’s case, five years.

“I'm moving,” Jake blurts out. “Back to Edmonton.”

Anders feels like he's been hit by a truck. 

“When?”

“Last week of August,” Jake replies. He hasn’t looked at Anders yet, hasn’t moved at all aside from balling his hands into fists at his sides.

“Oh,” Anders mutters, because he doesn’t know what else he's supposed to say. 

Jake takes a breath, and Anders can hear the way it breaks in the middle. “Sorry.”

_Why did you kiss me?_ Anders wants to ask. _Why would you promise me something if you’re about to leave? How can you drop that bomb on me and the only thing you can say is _sorry?

This summer was supposed to be the beginning of something. When Jake kissed him the night before, out on the dock so late that only the stars saw them, it wasn’t supposed to be the last time. But Anders doesn’t know how to continue on like this if it’s possible he’s just a few months removed from never seeing Jake again. 

He sits in the passenger seat of the car he helped Jake pick out, staring at a stain on the upholstery he had caused after an ill-advised attempt to balance an extra-large Coke on the center console on their way back from the movie theater a few months prior. He sits there until he can’t bear it any longer, and then he opens the door so suddenly that Jake visibly startles. 

“Thanks for the trip,” Anders says. “I had fun.”

Jake’s voice sounds sad when he speaks, but Anders isn’t looking at him and can’t tell that he’s on the verge of tears. 

“See you around.”

━━━━━━━━

The morning air is heavy and humid, almost wet. Anders gets a ride from his older sister to Jake’s. When the moving truck comes into view as they drive around the corner, Anders’ heart sinks. It’s one thing to know, but it’s another to see it unfolding right in front of his eyes.

Jake walks out of the front door holding a cardboard box. It’s sealed with the same bright green duct tape that he had used to repair the tent he and Anders shared during summer camp when they were twelve. _Video games_ is written on the side in thick marker, the same messy handwriting that adorned Anders’ birthday cards over the years. 

Jake’s determined expression breaks when he sees Anders. He sets the box down at the top of the front porch steps and runs down and across the driveway, throwing his arms out and hugging Anders so tight it hurts. 

“You came,” Jake whispers. 

Anders hugs him back. “Of course I came, you idiot. You’re my best friend.”

It seems to break the tension just enough, and Jake is smiling when he steps back. “Can you help me with some boxes?”

They move back and forth between the house and the moving truck, straining with the weight of Jake’s entire life contained in cardboard.

Anders wedges the last box into the backseat of Jake’s parents’ car. When he closes the door, the windows are so fogged up that he can’t see inside. 

Jake uses the pad of his finger to write _JD_ on the condensation on the glass.

“You, too.”

Anders adds _AB_ below it, along with a face with its tongue out. 

“We’ll stay in touch, right?” Jake asks. 

As if it's in Anders’ control. As if drifting apart will be a decision that one of them makes instead of something that happens gradually, right in front of their eyes, steady and inexorable like the passage of time. 

“Of course we will,” Anders replies, because that's what you say when your best friend is standing in front of you and asking for reassurance. 

“Okay.”

Anders thinks about the way Jake kissed him on the dock in late June, reckless and hopeful. Like a promise of something that Anders would never get. He swallows a plead. He doesn’t even know what he’d say, if somehow he didn’t stop himself. 

Jake gets into the backseat of the sedan. 

Anders wants to stop him. He wants to pull the door open. Wants to ask if, somehow, Jake could stay. It’s an ugly and selfish thing, but there’s a part of him that’s angry with Jake for leaving. He knows that Jake will fit right into his new school in Edmonton. He’ll use those clever eyes and gentle, lilting voice and whoever finds themselves as the focus of his attention will be just as spellbound as Anders was. As he still _is_. 

Anders isn’t like Jake. He doesn’t know what his social landscape will look like come September. He _knows_ people, they know him, but they’re mostly people he knows through Jake. That’s what they are to him, and he knows that’s what he’ll be to them. _Jake’s friend_. Nothing more, nothing less. He might say passing words to Sean or Charlie or Matt in the hallway, but they won’t invite him to any parties or really mean it when they ask how he’s doing. 

Jake rolls down the window and sticks his head out. “I’ll text you.”

“You’d fuckin’ better,” Anders says. “Don’t break my heart, zeebs.”

Jake laughs. “You never make any sense, dude.”

He seems to have entirely missed the honesty in Anders’ statement. That’s the point, Anders supposes, of the absurdity. There’s a vulnerability in being understood. 

The ignition starts. Jake gives Anders a long, meaningful look, but doesn’t say anything more. He gives a brief wave before rolling the window back up. 

Anders feels a hand on his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” his sister says. She wraps her arm more tightly around him, pulling him closer so he can lean against her as his shoulders begin to shake with sobs. Jake’s car is still in view, and Anders hopes he isn’t looking back.

Then the car and the truck round the corner, and Anders watches as they disappear behind the trees.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please leave a comment and/or any feedback it would mean so much


End file.
